We analyzed ONTRAPORT nearly two years ago, however Since that time, the software has evolved considerably, and they’ve added some new capabilities that were wonderful. So, it’s time. Also, although at first glance they’ve added several new features have not actually fine-tuned some older ones. Let’s explore it in detail.

Company Overview

ONTRAPORT founder and CEO Landon Ray created ONTRAPORT while running yet another business, when he could not locate a CRM that will let him conduct his business. Launched in 2008 and conceptualized in 2006, ONTRAPORT has grown during the last few years and they have. They have won several awards such as #2 nationwide for CareerBuilder’s’Big Strides in Small Business’, #102 on the Inc 500 list of fastest growing companies in the country, a spot on the 50 Most Engaged Workplaces listing, a Red Herring Top 100, and a Forbes Most Promising Companies listing.

Who is it not for?

It is not even mid-sized or ideal for large companies. And if you send a great deal of emails out every month, and have hundreds of thousands of clients, ONTRAPORT could end up being somewhat costly. Companies that don’t really require autoresponder and marketing automation and run sales models, can find cheaper options.

Who’s it for?

If you sell info products, offer instruction services, Online training or instruction, or conduct any type of paid membership site, you’ll totally love ONTRAPORT. It makes your life easy by automating almost everything other CRMs will force you to do manually.

Just like any other applications, ONTRAPORT has its Pros and cons. It is not perfect, and you will find things that its competitors can perform exponentially better. But it is one of the greatest — maybe the best — marketing automation software solutions available for small businesses, especially if they market their products or services online. Infusionsoft Pricing 2015

Getting started

Getting started with ONTRAPORT is not as complex as it was two Years ago. It does not provide a trial version like most other CRMs, but does offer a 90-day money back guarantee. If you think the product is not right for you or you are not ready for this yet, you are going to receive full refund, no cancellation fee, no questions asked.

Signing up for ONTRAPORT is a little complex and you can only import Contacts in CSV format. Many CRMs permit you to import contacts in different formats, or even straight from third party sources such as Gmail, social networking channels, Yahoo, Highrise etc.. The import method is compact and easy, you can add new fields to fit the information you are importing, from precisely the same page.

You can add new custom fields instantly while importing contacts

There is no installation fee and you also get 2 hours and implementation. If you want to have a peek at the machine before buying it It is also possible to get a free presentation.

Workspace and user experience

The program seems somewhat less responsive than Infusionsoft, and also their Main dashboard — though customizable — is not very intuitive. The dashboard displays a lot of boxes which display the metrics you choose, but it may be somewhat confusing.

Several CRMs such as Salesforce, Groove, Nimble, Sprout offer strong Social media integration to supply you with a better comprehension of your customers, ONTRAPORT is missing this feature. Likewise, when we analyzed ONTRAPORT last time, they had an program nor a mobile-friendly website. Although, they have an app for both iOS and Android now, not one of them is updated. We tested the latter and struck too many issues to record.

Aside from the Aforementioned qualms, we really liked things Concerning the workspace: the interface is customizable, the menus are strategically laid out, sensible and regular naming conventions have been utilized, and you will find quick add/manage buttons for every single module. You are able to add up to 150 custom fields and custom columns to customize the work area depending on your business requirements.

Probably the most impressive and One of a Kind feature in the workspace Is a quick menu which appears on peak of the page when you click on the little button at the upper right-hand corner. This fast menu comprises your workflows, any unedited objects, and pinned items. It is possible to easily pin any object by clicking on the pin button highlighted in the screenshot below, so that you can immediately access your favorite types , contacts, landing pages or some other menus.

When you want to go, the work place excels Beyond contacting and simply managing your clients. By way of example, you could create landing pages, sales cart, internet forms and also a lot more by just dragging and dropping items.

When we compare the work area of ONTRAPORT and Infusionsoft, it turns Out that despite InfusionSoft with some additional features and bells and whistles, what one can do, the other can also do. A notable difference is Infusionsoft’s campaign builder, which is more intuitive compared to its counterpart in ONTRAPORT.

Powerful API

Besides integration with several third party apps Such as WordPress, Facebook, WISTIA, Twilio, KAJABI, EVERGREEN, GoToWebinar, Authorize.Net, Elavon, eWay, UltraCART, 1ShoppingCart, and ClickBank, ONTRAPORT has an API which lets you integrate it with just about any software.

How popular is it?

Short answer is we’re not sure. They were not Exactly forthcoming about their customer base, apart from it extends to over 63 countries around the world. Infusionsoft Pricing 2015

Advantages

Best value for money — you receive a CRM, an autoresponder, a shopping cart, WordPress membership sites, affiliate management and task automation for only a few hundred bucks. On the contrary, one of their most important rivals Infusionsoft costs $1,999 kickstart charge.

You don’t even need your site because ONTRAPORT may also host your site since their sub-domain

Great customer support

Pricing — The most obvious benefit of ONTRAPORT is that the affordability of the service. At $297/month without the installation fees and 2 hours of free onboarding calls, they are positioned very competitively. What is important to think about with Ontraport is that they give you access to all their features, along with the capacity to store 25,000 contacts and send 100,000 emails. While a few other tools might start at a lower entry cost, you would likely pay 5-10x the cost of ONTRAPORT for the same level of contacts &amp; attributes. They’re scalable so that as your company grows, they could develop together with you so that you do not need to be concerned about switching systems later. The supply of a 90 day risk free guarantee is almost unheard of nowadays along with month-to-month or discounted yearly pricing option after the 90 day risk guarantee interval.

Great community — ONTRAPORT has award winning customer support through telephone, chat, and email during most business hours. They are clearly committed to the success of their clients, holding a 97% satisfaction rate and each of their reps work from one central location for seamless communication between support and development. They updated all their servers for redundancy, invested in a content delivery network to guarantee the fastest speed globally and are continuously looking for ways to make their program quick and responsive. They also have a fantastic community of users in their Facebook user group, an education site that is totally free to ONTRAPORT clients, a quarterly bootcamp and certified consultant course and an yearly business construction event in Santa Barbara, CA.

Unified system — ONTRAPORT is the automatic engine supporting your marketing campaigns, seamlessly integrating your emails, landing pages, ecommerce and much more with your CRM so you can hyper-target your prospects and convert them to customers. When you have systems handling all these surgeries, your data is strewn around and it’s hard to have the ability to make smart, data-driven decisions regarding your company. ONTRAPORT unites your advertising efforts into one system so you have ONE place to call to look at your business data.

Custom items — ONTRAPORT offers the capability to build custom items which is only accessible business systems like SalesForce, Marketo or even Eloqua. Custom made objects permits you to create relationships between databases. Unique to your company.

ECommerce features — ONTRAPORT has a massive assortment of notable ecommerce features including automatic credit card payment collections and the capacity to include upsells, cross-sells, cart abandonment and credit card expiry notification automation.

Cons

Lacks some conventional sales modules like chance management

No social networking integration

Weak mobile program, not regularly upgraded

With all the e-commerce and membership site features, ONTRAPORT should have a customer support module where clients can increase a ticket

No visual sales funnel

Both bundles allow 25,000 connections with 100K emails and 100K contacts with 100k emails. That means if you hit the top limit for your contacts, you can only send four or even one email per contact per month respectively, and purchasing email packages can be pricey

The learning curve could be a bit steep, especially when you want to use the innovative attributes

Dashboard user interface — While you can create virtually any metric you would enjoy, their reporting dashboard is not particularly visually appealing as it doesn’t have charts and graphs. Infusionsoft Pricing 2015

Automation campaign builder — Even though Ontraport’s campaign builder is easy to use and sufficiently strong, it operates by adding text-based principles one under another. We locate the visual’flowchart’ style campaign builder utilized by a few of Ontraport’s competitors more intuitive to use.

Features of ONTRAPORT

Before we delve into the features of ONTRAPORT, Let us first talk about the added attributes: ONTRAforms, ONTRAPORT marketplace, and ONTRAPORT projects, during the annual event called ONTRApalooza, in 2015.

ONTRAPORT Projects

Powerful and another intriguing attribute is ONTRAPORT Projects. Essentially, it’s an training program which lets you get your company up and running immediately. The CRM suggests different projects based on your company needs and collects some data about your company. You walk through the rest of the process, one step at a time when a project is chosen by you. You can pause your job in the center, and restart it later, or keep with features of the CRM.

Let’s say you need to market a product to get a monthly And you’re using ONTRAPORT for the first time, you probably don’t have any clue what to do and where to start. Really where Projects menu comes to a rescue, this is; it’ll steer you to take care of everything from defining a product to selecting subscription fee to referrals and so on.

ONTRAPORT Marketplace

Like an app shop, the ONTRAPORT marketplace lets you Discuss ONTRApages, ONTRAmail and ONTRAform templates together with all the ONTRAPORT community. You share or can use templates.

When you can select them to Share at no cost, free for specific customers or you can even charge for your layouts as well as content either a one-time fee or recurring subscription fee. The smart software system takes care of everything, and you get 90% of the fee. Compared to most will realise this is obviously a value that is greater.

Sequences

This is Produce a series of follow up activities i.e. email, SMS, tasks, rules as well as fulfillments. These sequences can be triggered by clients through your blog, email or some other supply, and the client’s request will be processed by ONTRAPORT according to the rules you specified, even while you are sleeping.

Contacts

ONTRAPORT Permits You to save a variety of important details Prospects clients in addition to in one, highly customizable screen. While viewing a contact, you can send them an email or a text message, log a telephone call, manage their credit card, add a task… and the list continues on and on.

To update any area, just click the value in the Particular field, hit save button that appears right next to the area and enter the new value. Adding tags and sequences is also an issue of a couple of clicks. Simply speaking, the touch menu is straightforward yet comprehensive.

Messages

ONTRAPORT Permits You to send emails, complete colour, text messages Postcards, and last but not least equipped customizable email templates called ONTRAmail. Based upon the pricing strategy you choose, you may send a certain number of emails per month, and if you’ve got an extremely large clientele, then you might end up having to buy expensive additional messages. For text messages, you want to pay 2 cents per message — which ONTRAPORT asserts is the cheapest in the industry. Likewise, ONTRAPORT costs a little .

The best thing about messages is They are Two-way messages i.e. the answer from the customer can trigger a sequence. Also, you may automatically insert merge fields to mails as well as text messages i.e. first name/last title or any other information of this contact.

Rules

Activate sequences or activities based on whether, then states. By way of example, you can create a rule to recharge transactions were declined by all, remove the contact from sequence, send notification to any of your teammates, add a label and so on. Infusionsoft Pricing 2015

Event Administration

Event management is another unique feature of ONTRAPORT that allows you manage and to run events like teleseminars, webinars or events that are live. You’re able to monitor individuals who attended and those who could not, and tell the CRM to mechanically follow up with each group.

Tasks

The task management simplifies most of the procedures and saves a lot of time. You can assign prospects to your applicable teammate, path prospects based on several indexes (zip code, job name, site visits etc.). You can make decisions of routing leads on a round-robin or percent basis.

It is disappointing that you can not add a new task When you are viewing your tasks; rather you have to go to bring a new task. Also, there is no calendar where you can see your appointments and tasks.

Settings

It is a menu that allows you add/edit/delete Import contacts, custom fields, manage change the default value of these merge fields, handle scheduled broadcasts, and lead routing and scoring.

Partner & Affiliate Program Management

This feature lets you handle your affiliate program. Produce a branded partner centre on your own website in minutes and offer the desired instruments to them. It’s possible to make multiple affiliate programs for various products or partner types. You can even automate manually or commissions sanction them after seeing.

Sales

You’ll if you run an Internet ecommerce business Totally adore the sales module of ONTRAPORT. Here you can see all of the purchases made by your customers, products that you sell, generate various reports such as sales report, subscriber retention report, transaction log, open orders and much more.

In Regards to e-commerce, while ONTRAPORT does The principles right, Infusionsoft beats it to the punch. Primarily, ONTRAPORT does not possess a shopping cart as found in Infusionsoft. To get similar functionality, you are going to need to incorporate ONTRAPORT using 1 Shopping Cart. Handling payments in addition to managing payment programs is relatively simpler in Infusionsoft: Infusionsoft includes a built-in merchant accounts called Infusionsoft Payments, a feature missing in ONTRAPORT.

Tracking

This menu tells who’s engaging with your content. Unlike many other Analytic programs, ONTRAPORT tracking not only shows you how many users are viewing your website, but in addition, it tells you who they are, exactly what pages they’ve seen, when they viewed it and a lot more.

You can track users by campaign Alerts content, or by duration and get if someone downloads your product, to follow up; a prospect visits a specific landing page or anything else. Infusionsoft Pricing 2015

Websites

This module create amazing as well as lets you integrate WordPress websites Landing pages by simply dragging and dropping. Last time we analyzed ONTRAPORT, this module did not work on Google Chrome, however we were able to create a great landing page this moment.

It’s a great feature for selling products or Online coaching services. You create unlimited membership amounts can host movies and websites for your clients, and update members as time passes, when access is paid for by them.

ONTRAforms

You Can Opt to produce order or opt-in forms using ONTRAPORT and then Host on your webpage. All you need to do is print, and add your photos and texts As there are a lot of professionally designed templates available. Customizing the blocks and using them over and over again is a matter of a couple of mouse clicks , by employing the click-to-select editor.

You can print your types as static forms, Picture or link, or even a lightbox pop-up. The option that is smart and most fascinating is most likely the lightbox pop-up, which you may choose to get triggered when a person scrolls past percentage of the page spends a specified timeframe on your website or intends to exit. A adequate tool on its own is rather pricey.

Cost

ONTRAPORT has recently announced a new pricing plan, Geared towards solopreneurs, called Basic. Only 1 login is offered by it, is reasonably priced but lacks key features. The remainder of the two plans haven’t changed much since we last reviewed ONTRAPORT, and each of the programs come with a 90-day money back guarantee.

Basic

$79/month, unlimited emails, 1,000 contacts, ONTRApages web pages, beautiful email templates and SMS advertising automation to get you started right

Pro

Wrap-up

ONTRAPORT as a CRM impresses, and as a business ONTRAPORT participates, also. Their progressiveness is represented within their product. Like CRM vendors out there, it is a game of leapfrog with the contest, and they perform it continuously enhancing their merchandise. Their CRM is especially suited to businesses that do complex email advertising, and should you run an affiliate reseller program (which is an ideal method to run a little-cost independent sales group ), ONTRAPORT is a superb tool to manage for you, too. Infusionsoft Pricing 2015